What Was Lost
by Overlooked Bookworm
Summary: The Bolsheviks came...and took those few whom accepted him.


Russia broke down the door of the room that the Bolsheviks had him imprisoned in while they killed the Romanovs. Up until the last few moments before when they attacked, they had kept the details of the plan hidden from Russia. They knew that he would never stand for his sunflower's— Anastasia's—murder. He ran through the palace, throwing open doors to find her or at least her corpse.

Russia found her lying in the snow of her favourite palace garden, the one that grew the sunflowers after which her nickname was lovingly given. Her hands were folded over her upper stomach—right above a gunshot wound. A small trickle of blood ran from Anastasia's mouth and down the side of her face, and her blue eyes where tenderly closed to give an appearance of sleep. Her strawberry-blonde hair fanned around her body, sinking into the snow.

"No..." Russia choked, refusing to process what he was seeing.

"I'm sorry, Russia, but had to be done," Stalin whispered cruelly, watching in amusement his great country break down over such an insignificant pest.

"Why are you here? Doesn't Lenin already know that I can't stand you?" Russia growled.

"Huh, it must have slipped his mind among all of the bloodshed..." he smirked.

"Again, I ask what was the point of killing off an innocent child who had nothing to do with her father's matters and mistakes?" Russia hissed. No one was going to take his precious sunflower from him and get away with it.

"Oh, maybe she might have lusted for power, and plotted to implore help from any one of her mother's monarchial relatives in England, and our country would become imperial again," Stalin said.

"Or she might have proved to have been a valuable ally, with convincing the superpowers of the world that our brand of communism isn't that bad. That, and she was still young enough to have been easily shown our way of perceiving a government wasn't bad, either," Russia mused, developing a sense of distrust for the Bolsheviks.

"True, but there would still be a great chance of it not working, and her betraying us."

"The same way you Bolsheviks betrayed me, your country when you had promised that she would live?"

Seeing his hypocrisy, Stalin decided to just leave before he dug himself an even deeper grave, which Russia had no problem with and found the will in solitude to mull over his Anastasia's death. How could they take away such an innocent life, one that had done no wrong, and expect him not to vow vengeance? He would wonder. In Russia's mind, he had seen her as a cheery face amongst the palace, even during the country's darkest hours. She would play numerous pranks, and her laughter would fill the halls of the St. Petersburg Palace throughout the coldest of days. To Russia not Olga, Tatiana, or even Maria had a spirit as free as Anastasia's. And yet... That fire that burned inside her—warming the palaces on the coldest days and lighting them up on the darkest and most depressing one—seemed to have disappeared along with her life. No more would there be hide and seek in the ballroom, no more picking sunflowers in the garden in the summer, no more snow angels and snow men in the winter, no more of any of the joys that gave Russia reasons—reasons to fight for the right to have fun, reasons that made the war and those dark days bearable.

"My dear sunflower... I thought that you would live to a ripe old age and die amongst friends, never something without a cause... something that I should have been able to stop..." Russia whispered to wherever her soul might have ended up by now. He lay there next to her corpse for hours, thinking of all of the things he could have done to save her. Eventually, he fell into unconsciousness from all of the stress that not only he went through, but his country as well.

When Russia came to, he was tucked in in his bed. His younger sister, Belarus, was hovering over him, while his older one Ukraine was looking worried in a corner.

"Sister... where is she?" Russia croaked.

"Who do you mean, big brother?" Belarus narrowed her eyes. She never did acknowledge that her brother loved Anastasia instead of her, and promptly decided to blatantly ignore her very existence.

"Sister, you know exactly who I'm talking about. Anastasia," he glared upwards.

"Oh. The little snot. All I know is that they took her body away and buried it somewhere. I don't know where, since they kept it a secret. Not even Lenin knows the exact location of her grave," Belarus sniffed in disgust.

"At least they did that for her…she won't have to deal with the indignities of grave robbers or those whom might desecrate her body out of revenge and anger towards her father and how he messed everything up… " Russia sighed.

'My dear sunflower, I promise to find you once all of this dies down. I will dig up every inch of land until I find you and your siblings. Then, once I do that, I will give you all a proper burial. You will rest for eternity next to my other closest humans. You, Anastasia, will get a special place—you will lay next to Catherine the Great. I know it isn't much, but I will spend the next millennium at least trying to make it up to you. I will be forever sorry for what I did do, and what I failed to do. Goodbye, sunflower. Until we meet again,' he vowed to himself.


End file.
